Finance gives Casey weight

A year into his second term, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey is in a position to influence policy like never before, but he had to give up a cherished post.

In exchange for assuming former Sen. John Kerry's coveted seat on the Senate Finance Committee earlier this year, Mr. Casey surrendered his Senate Foreign Relations Committee perch and chairmanship of its Middle East subcommittee. Mr. Kerry sat on both committees.

"I wanted to, but you can't always get what you want on committees," Mr. Casey said.

Not that he's complaining.

The Finance Committee oversees a huge swath of the federal government, including the budget, the tax code, Medicare, Social Security and trade.

"I'm really glad to be on Finance. I wouldn't have predicted that," he said. "It's the most sought-after committee in the whole place. â¦ And if we do tax reform - which I think is really important we try to get something done, we've all worked hard on and don't have a consensus yet - it becomes and is the committee for tax reform. It's good to have that chance."

In an interview with The Sunday Times in his Scranton office, the Democratic senator from Scranton talked about Congress' upcoming budget talks, the hopes for a "grand bargain" budget agreement that permanently gets federal deficits under control, the sequestration process indiscriminately cutting government spending, doing battle with Republicans and his views on President Barack Obama's second term so far.

Mr. Casey started by talking about Congress' upcoming week and its focus on reaching a budget deal to replace one expiring next Sunday.

Mr. Casey: It would be preferable if they got something on the budget and maybe even begin to have discussions about next year. One thing they probably will not get done - and I hope I'm wrong about this - is to shut sequestration off. â¦ Meaning, in other words, the theory behind sequestration was it would be so objectionable, so odious to both sides - one side (Democrats) mostly because of domestic cuts, the other side (Republicans) because of defense cuts - that because you had that meeting of the minds, that it was a bad idea, it wouldn't happen. â¦ That's a lot less certain now, a lot less likely. We were told (Senate Republican Leader Mitch) McConnell is going to the House saying, "Embrace it (sequestration) for a second year."

Q: (Krawczeniuk) Keep sequestration in place?

A: (Casey) Yeah, yeah, which is really bad for everybody because it's the worst way to budget.

Q: Are the defense cuts not deep enough to scare the Republicans?

A: Well, I think part of it is, and this will affect both parties, defense cuts are job cuts. Not in every circumstance, but to a significant degree they become job cuts. It may be that that just hasn't developed enough to put pressure on people in both parties. In other words, they're not feeling the heat of those cuts. And I think that's true in a lot of areas where - I hate to just say this, but I believe it - on some of these cuts or the results of some of these cuts will be such that you'll feel the impact, real people will feel it in some way. And by the time people really feel it, it will be too late to unravel or somehow rectify.

Q: So what do you see on the domestic side as the further (sequestration) cuts hurting?

A: One of the most egregious examples and really disturbing examples is NIH (National Institutes of Health). You're talking about something that we have a tremendous advantage on - medical research. We have led the world for how many generations now. â¦ Sequestration alone would lead to between 70 and 80 fewer research grants a year. We don't know whether it's one or 20 or none, (but) it's possible that you're not giving a grant that could have a big impact on Alzheimer's or big effect on some other major health problem. â¦ That's the real tragedy, that the one country in the world that can really get at a cure or really make substantial progress towards a cure is the country that's kind of like penny-pinching. And the idea that the federal government, on an annual basis, has trouble coming up with an extra billion (dollars) for medical research is an insult.

Q: Well, there's consistent talk of a grand bargain (on the budget and long-term spending). Is this even a possibility any more?

A: I think that's hard, really hard, because you have a couple of forces that are really pushing against it. One is the clock or the calendar. The closer you get to the 2014 elections, the harder it is to get an agreement. â¦ I think the talks that have taken place - some of them formal, some of them a lot less formal - on this topic have been constructive. They haven't yielded the kind of results we want yet. â¦ But it's important to just keep talking.

Q: How do you think his (Mr. Obama's) second term is going?

A: Oh, it's been difficult, but â¦ I can't think of a president in modern history who hasn't had, not just a difficult second term, but difficulties of one dimension or another even in the first year or two. â¦ I don't know why that is or what to attribute that to, but I think it's pretty typical. And it's particularly unusual, if you look at polling, the economic and jobs concerns are always one or two, and they are still are in large measure. Even when those have gotten better and better, there's still a sense that the country's on the wrong track, there's still a real frustration, even anger about health care and it's pretty remarkable. You have a president who when he came into office we were losing 700,000 jobs a month, month after month, and even five, six months before he got there. â¦ That's been completely turned around.

Q: Do you get to talk to him (the president) much?

A: We had a good chat when he was here in August on the bus for about 40 minutes. I saw him at an event in Philly two Thursdays ago. â¦ I was struck by two things about him. No. 1 is he - and I think great leaders do this - he doesn't show any signs of internalizing (his political difficulties or saying) "I'm having a tough time or why isn't he helping me?" It's always about the folks out there. â¦ No. 2 is just â¦ a kind of steadiness or equanimity that allows him to handle a lot of downturn or difficulty, political and otherwise, and not become too upset about it. â¦ I think that there's a steadiness there that's helpful. I know it helps on foreign policy, and it's more difficult to achieve domestically because the opposition is kind of scorched earth and unyielding.

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